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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28716306">sunlit days, endless nights</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsgameover/pseuds/itsgameover'>itsgameover</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>EXO (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Shall We? (Chen Music Video), Bookstore Owner Kim Jongdae | Chen, Fireworks, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Shall We? aka the only exo/soloist mv that gives me huge hiraeth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:41:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28716306</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsgameover/pseuds/itsgameover</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jongdae wants Minseok to live forever.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Challenge #12 — EXO's Universe</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>sunlit days, endless nights</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I told my friend "I don't know that mv to write about", she said "didn't you say Shall We? like... a week ago?" and I screamed because she was right.<br/>I loved writing this story. Despite being short and fairly simple/cliché, I loved it, so I hope you may like it too &lt;3<br/>Thank you in advance for giving this fic a chance :')</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>The daylight is always bright and warm and somehow inside Jongdae’s bookstore it feels full of something more than just the simple warmth of the morning sun. It’s glorious and cosy, and it becomes magical once Minseok pushes his glasses to fit better on the bridge of his nose, soft brown hair shining in the light. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a daily repetition of the first time they met, amidst the rows of tidily organized books, endless shelves of stories. Minseok had been browsing for hours when Jongdae approached him, asked if he needed anything and pointed in the direction of the fantasy novels. Minseok looked at him with a golden glee across his face, then told him he looked like a writer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jongdae shrugged, “I write in my spare time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Minseok kept coming back, and one day he asked Jongdae out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It started in broad daylight, like all lovely things do, like they are meant to start. With a date on the beach, drinking smoothies and people watching. Minseok asking if Jongdae has ever published anything he’s ever written, Jongdae answering he doesn’t have the courage to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A year later, an editor told him his poetry book was good enough to be published. He only showed the published piece to Minseok at night, afraid that the daylight would reveal all the nervousness hiding behind his smile. </span>
  <span>Minseok took the book, read the dedication and smiled as tears pooled inside his eyes. In the nighttime, sitting in the balcony of Jongdae’s small apartment, his tears looked like drops of diamonds, like tiny galaxies with all of their planets and stars and comets. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the night time, it feels… different to be together. It’s not better or worse, just an entire new experience. Minseok is shy in the daylight, but bold and bright in the night, starry sky unveiling the hidden outburst of joy and energy and might. He is always lovely, Jongdae wouldn’t have dated someone he didn’t find attractive or charming, but it’s in these hours, when the sun falls and the moon takes over the sky, that Minseok truly comes alive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Summers are always a delight, an unexpected journey each night. So the fact that one night Minseok shows up at his doorstep with a blanket and a picnic basket and tells him there is going to be a fireworks display in the pier by the bay and they should watch it together from the other side of the bay, it’s truly not a shock, it’s unexpected but welcomed with open arms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The drive is quiet, the eerie sounds of the midnight seaside road keeping their minds busy, one hand intertwined with another, watching the city melt into nothingness, blotches of dark paint against a cerulean sky splattered with stars. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the nighttime, Minseok truly comes alive and he is bolder than usual, grabbing Jongdae’s hand and running down the beach until he comes to a halt near the line that the ocean kisses everytime it brushes the shore. He puts down the blanket and the basket and grabs Jongdae by the waist until he is sitting on Minseok’s lap, head hidden in his shoulder with embarrassment tinting his high cheekbones in pinks that the night hides pretty well.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s this bold version of Minseok the one that Jongdae wrote most of his poems about. It’s rare, since they spend most of their time together during the day, so he immortalizes it in words. It loves in little verses about a moon of silver eyes possessing a sun child, a quiet and quite vintage soul suddenly beaming with the life of a young satellite, and Jongdae is left in awe, watching it orbit the little apartment he inhabits. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The firework display starts a few minutes after they arrive and it fills the sky with hundreds of colors, with shapes and lights. He feels every bit an excited kid, gasping everytime a new firework explodes in the sky, bright and beautiful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jongdae scrambles to grab his backpack and digs in between the towel and the glasses and the sweets he keeps in there, picking out his battered and worn out leather bound journal. Minseok looks at him with shiny eyes, half smile on his lips, one eyebrow quipped up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you writing?” he asks, peeking over Jongdae’s shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Something,” Jongdae moves away, pushes the journal into the sand and hurries to write quicker.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it a new poem? Did you have a new idea?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did,” Jongdae sighs into the page, looking at the poor excuse of cursive handwriting that his fingers deliver. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can I know what it is about?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jongdae shrugs, “it’s not really good…” Minseok furrows his brow, looking at him with disbelieving eyes. “Fine, it’s about you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is it called?” Minseok asks, leaning forward to press his head against Jongdae’s shoulder, hand sneaking around his body to grab his waist, pressing their bodies snugly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know it yet, but it’s about fireworks and the night sky” Jongdae feels Minseok’s breath brush his neck and it’s driving him mad with the need to kiss him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You feel like a firework, here and gone in a minute, like all lives are,” he reads, soft voice piercing the night with it’s silver edge, “but more splendid, bolder when the sky is dark.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not meant to rhyme, it's a free verse,” he turns to face Minseok, voice just a bit shaky, he is always so hesitant to show his work, even if he is showing it to the one who inspires him to keep going. “I’ll shape it like a firework in the page, so it looks like I want it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s beautiful,” Minseok says and kisses him dizzy while the explosions fill the sky and the waves rise and rise and rise...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jongdae wants Minseok to live forever, so he writes about him, about the shy and the bold, about the days in the bookstore and the nights at the beach, hoping that his words make him immortal. </span>
</p>
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